As the saying goes the devil is in the details. Royal Caribbean is advertising misleading amenities aboard this ship and offering a poorly managed valet luggage service for debarkation that leaves you with a poor post cruise impression on an otherwise good experience. We took an amazing 7-day Alaska cruise on Ovation of the Seas with 11 people (family and friends). We had an excellent time on board and with our our excursions.

There are two main problems that are business decisions on the part of Royal Caribbean that mislead and disappointed our group, creating a feeling of distrust and overall dissatisfaction with Royal Caribbean. The first is misrepresented amenities and the second is poor operation of the complimentary debarkation valet luggage service.

Misrepresented amenities: While booking this cruise you will see three high profile activities that are "included", Flowrider, North Star and iFly indoor skydiving. While these are technically included, the availability is extremely limited for the basic (free/included) time slots. Essentially Royal Caribbean has chosen to make all these amenities an opportunity for up-charging you additional fees. They offer an abundance of time slots for the extra-fee versions of each amenity while limiting the basic level availability. Royal Caribbean could avoid this problem by making all time slots available at the basic level with an option to upgrade. Instead what you will find is that it is near impossible to schedule a basic time slot for these activities, essentially leading to this to being a bait and switch tactic. No-one in our group of 11 was able to schedule a time slot for these included amenities despite a desire to do so. Read more